


half your life you kept it in

by majorrager



Category: Battle Royale - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2015-05-29
Packaged: 2018-04-01 19:59:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4032742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/majorrager/pseuds/majorrager
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Haruka survives the lighthouse massacre. Yukie doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	half your life you kept it in

**Author's Note:**

> Does anyone even read fic for this fandom any more? Haha. Anyway, this work is dependent on the extra canon confirmed in _Angels' Border_. If you haven't read it, all you really need to know is that it established Haruka as a lesbian with feelings for Yukie.

Satomi takes each bullet to the chest one by one before she falls. It doesn't happen at the first, or the second, or the third. Blood bursts like fireworks through the sweat-stained white of her uniform, exploding outwards from fixed points. The fourth bullet hits her in the neck, and then Haruka's out of ammunition, and _then_ Satomi drops, arcing backwards, blood trailing like a ribbon secured to her throat. She hasn't yet hit the ground before Haruka's squeezing the trigger again and again. _Click. Click._  
  
Her pulse is so loud. She can feel it in her temples, her ears, her chest.  
  
It's only when her mind catches up and tells her _You're all out now_ that she stops depressing the trigger. Her hand slackens and her wrist goes weak. The gun clatters to the tile. Haruka looks around.  
  
Red streaks the walls and the cabinets and floor. It dots the table and the stove and the window. It's smeared across legs and hands and faces and it's matted into hair. The room stinks of gunpowder and blood and the acrid scent of Yuka's vomit and the stew that has been overturned onto the floor. The silence that has settled over the room is so full and so complete and so _final_ that Haruka knows that she is now alone in a way that she has never been before.  
  
_I've been shot_ , she thinks blankly.  
  
She presses her hands over the wound in her thigh. She doesn't know where exactly it hit, or how deep, but there's a lot of blood, and when she seals her hands against her sweatpants she can feel it sop up under her fingers, saturating through the fabric like soap suds in a hand wash. It doesn't even hurt. Nothing she is experiencing right now feels like it's actually _happening_. That's all Haruka can think as she reaches to tug the scarf free from her collar. She knots the silk tightly over the wound and slightly above it, pulling the ends as hard as she can. Her left arm feels strangely numb and heavy, and when her fingers turn thick and unresponsive halfway through the task, she realizes why. She fingers the hole in her shirt, right at the shoulder. Her body feels too stiff to reach behind to check and see if the bullet exited, but maybe it doesn't matter.  
  
Haruka presses her back to the cabinet and looks around. For the first time, she realizes that she's fallen, partially, onto Chisato. Chisato's body. She wraps a hand in her shirt and tries to roll her over. Chisato's face is a snapshot of the moment she was shot. There are tears still halfway down her cheeks. Her mouth is still open as if to finish a scream. There is blood in her hair and that's when Haruka realizes that the side of her head's been blown off.  
  
She lets go of Chisato's body. Yuko is crumpled up next to Satomi, small, hunched over as though she's shielding herself. But she's not moving and she's not breathing and one leg is sticking out at a strange angle, and there are holes in her back. Satomi is wedged against her with the machine gun cradled in a death grip, her neck still spewing blood in gradually weakening pulses. Yuka is face down in blood and bile. Her uniform's stained with red, too, but most of that seems to have happened after she died. After all, who would have tried to shoot at an already dead girl in all of that chaos? She looks beyond Yuka and sees Shuya Nanahara. He's partially in the hallway, slumped against the wall. She doesn't remember him coming out, doesn't remember seeing or hearing him. But the noise would have drawn anyone.  
  
_I'm forgetting someone,_ Haruka thinks. And then she forces herself to look.  
  
Over there. Close enough to touch. Yukie. She's laying in a puddle as slick and shiny as red satin under the fluorescent lighting, and that's what makes it real to Haruka all at once, even though it's the one thing she wants to believe the least.  
  
_Yukie._  
  
_Yukie._  
  
_Yukie._  


 

  
She doesn't die. At one point she slips into unconsciousness there on the bloodstained floor, and it happens so quickly that she doesn't have time for anything poignant or profound for a last thought.  
  
But she comes to hours later, because pain is burning its way through her, tunneling into her body and shredding her insides and making her sob and heave. She gasps and writhes and finds herself staring into the sun setting outside of the window. It's at exactly the right angle to blind her. For a while she sits there with her eyes closed, waiting, again, to die, but the pain won't let her. It won't let her.  
  
Her left arm is useless, but her legs are still strong, and when she rips a hole in her sweatpants and tears the fabric to examine the wound on her thigh, she sees that it's only clipped her. But it burns worse than her shoulder does; she feels feverish and sick, and that lends a delusional quality to the massacre spread around her. The passing hours and the heat have turned most of the red to brown and cooked the smell into a congealed miasma. Haruka hauls herself up to the counter and finds a half-empty water bottle there. She downs it, and she's panting over the sink when the 6:00 PM announcement sounds off. Sakamochi rattles off the names of the people sharing the room with her. He's purring, like the announcement is just for her. Like he's saying, _I know you're still in there, Tanizawa. How'd you pull that one off?_  
  
Haruka pulls the machine gun free of Satomi's grip. It's not possible to shoot herself in the head with this kind of gun, is it?  
  
_I have to leave._  
  
There's something inside of her that won't let her die. She needs to live. She doesn't know if she _wants_ to, but she needs to. It should have been Yukie. It should have been Yukie. It should have been Yukie— _Yukie._  
  
Even now, she can't touch her. Haruka can't put her hands on her. Can't taint her. She's dead, and Haruka's not, and even now she's afraid to touch her. She knows that this is probably the last time she'll ever see Yukie's body. Her best friend. Her love.  
  
But she doesn't touch her. Doesn't close her eyes for her or brush the hair out of her face or even remove the gun from her hands. Haruka doesn't go near her.  
  
She has to leave. She has to live.  


 

  
The final announcement at the end of the third day is a self-satisfied one.  
  
"I always just _love_ it when the final two are girls," says Sakamochi's static-thick voice. It slides right through the walls of the home Haruka's sheltered in. "It's great for our demographics. Unfortunately for me, I didn't bet on either of you, so it doesn't matter to me who wins. That said, good luck!" And his voice cuts out just like that, and Haruka already knows the name of the last thing in her way.  
  
When Mitsuko Souma finds her and levels a gun at her face, she doesn't hesitate.  
  
Later, Haruka will contemplate the difference between herself and Mitsuko when she wonders why her bullet hit home and Mitsuko's didn't. The difference is this: Mitsuko desperately, fiercely wants to live. Haruka's instincts tell her she _should_ , but her heart couldn't care less if she _does._  
  
It makes all the difference. Mitsuko's aim is sloppy. Haruka's hand is steadier than it's ever been.  


 

  
They hold her up before the cameras, flashbulbs popping in her face, shouting from all directions deafening her, walled on all sides by government officials, and she thinks, _I want my mother_ , and she thinks, _I want Yukie_ , and she thinks, _I wish Satomi had killed me_.  


 

  
The future for Program winners is contained in a box. Haruka's new name has the characters for _island_ and _water_ in it, and she thinks that it was probably on purpose. She shows up like an apparition in the emergency ward of the capital's most prestigious hospital and becomes a permanent fixture there for the next half a year. She thinks that the staff know why she's there. The looks they give her are too significant, too meaningful. Haruka becomes aware of a lot of things. She starts to be able to tell the difference. The people who know who she is and what she's done are easy to tell apart from the people who don't.  
  
Her shoulder sets again and the seams of her flesh close up. She undergoes therapy for her leg, but the real concern is the infection that had settled deep into it by the time she had won the game. She develops complications, and after three months they amputate her leg right below the spot she took the bullet. She will never play volleyball again, but she doesn't ever want to, anyway. She is given a wheelchair to use, but she rarely does. She can get around faster on crutches.  
  
That's who she becomes. Kaori Mizushima, a crippled transfer student in the tenth grade at a school where no one knows her name in a town that she's never heard of. She is told that she will never be Haruka Tanizawa ever again, and considering that she hasn't seen her family since before that field trip, it feels like a promise. At her new school, no one asks questions, but they all stare. That first year is rough, and Haruka would probably care more if she weren't only half-awake most of the time. Over the summer, she's fitted for a prosthetic, and she can hide it under her pants and the stares trickle to a stop. She is suddenly approachable again, even if she never wanted to be.  
  
The visits of her assigned government handlers are daily at first. They spend every waking hour with her, talking with her, guiding her, educating her. Drilling into her head over and over, _This is you now_ and _It's an honor to win the Program_ and _You'll never want for anything, so tell us how we can be of assistance._  
  
One day she says, "I want to talk to someone."  
  
"I'm right here to talk to." One of her handlers can't be that much older than she is. She's a young woman with glossy black hair in a bun so tight that it stretches out all of her features. Haruka has never seen her smile.  
  
"About the nightmares," Haruka says.  
  
The handler doesn't press it. But she sends Haruka to a doctor.  


 

  
In her dreams, Yukie survives the massacre and Haruka dies defending her. In her dreams, Yukie holds her as she bleeds out, saying _Don't go_. In her dreams, Yukie is still alive. Yukie can live forever, achieve immortality, as long as Haruka keeps dreaming about her. She dreams about making it to nationals, about brushing shoulders with Yukie on the court, about playing just one more game. She dreams about Yukie's dark, placid gaze. Her slender fingers. The way a dimple would appear in the center of her chin when she was concentrating. She dreams about the warm inflection Yukie would place on her name and her name only: _Haruka. Haruka. Haruka._  
  
Her nightmares are a lot simpler. In her nightmares, everything plays out the way it actually happened.  


 

  
They come to her door on her eighteenth birthday. Their double-breasted suits look a lot like the ones the officials had worn during the television broadcast pronouncing her victory three years ago. Haruka deliberately keeps few mental facts on the Non-Aggressive Forces, but she recognizes their badges when she sees them.  
  
She stares at them filling her doorway. There's five of them and a guard of lower-ranked staff behind them. She wonders if they are here to silence her over something. She can't imagine what; she has been a model Program winner, all things considered. She has accepted the life they've given her, kept her head low, her nose clean. But maybe they've heard about the prescription drugs she keeps taking on their dime.  
  
Kaori Mizushima defers and lowers her head. Haruka Tanizawa, on the other hand, doesn't care what happens, and part of her is compelled to try to reach for one of the guns tucked at their sides just to see how quickly she can get herself shot in the face.  
  
But they aren't here to hurt her or extort anything from her or cut her off.  
  
"We have an opportunity for you," they say.  


 

  
She learns that this is not unusual. She learns that this is what happens to a lot of Program winners. She comes to realize just how many members of the Non-Aggressive Forces were once just like her, winners of a game they never volunteered to play. But Haruka doesn't recognize herself in the faces of any of the men and women around her. They are young and old and in between and none of them have anything in common except for a sort of blankness in them all. Something numb and dead and unreal. Haruka tells herself that she is not like them because she hasn't given up.  
  
_On what?_ Yukie's voice asks somewhere in the back of her head. _On what, Haruka?_  


 

  
Haruka becomes Private Mizushima. Pvt. Mizushima is a recruiter. She visits schools, audits them. Approves them. Disqualifies them. Puts them on a shortlist. She keeps records and notes and she becomes very good at her job. Haruka had once dreamed of attending university and working on a law degree, an aspiration so unusual for her that Yukie had giggled the first time she had heard it, but then she'd said, _You'd be wonderful at it, Haruka._ The analytical nature of her work as a recruiter makes Haruka think that Yukie was right.  
  
The selection process is not random. It never was. Haruka moves through schools in her neatly pressed uniform. This one is suitable. That one isn't. This class has too many aggressive types. This class has not enough. This group has a good mix of personalities. That group ranks high in tests. What are we looking for this year?  
  
She wonders what young soldier once walked the halls of Shiroiwa Junior High and said, _This class would be perfect._ She wonders what kind of person she has become to be able to do the same.  


 

  
It takes a long time, but Haruka excels as a soldier. It's when she becomes Lance-Corporal Mizushima that she is permitted to move out of recruitment. She doesn't know what that means. She finds out almost immediately.  
  
"You'll serve on-site at this year's Program in Aomori."  
  
It's an honor. That's what they tell her. Everything they permit her is a deep honor. It takes her a while to absorb what that means. She will be one of the soldiers tasked with moving the cargo. With collaring them. With handing over a bag that could mean the difference between life and death for them. This is honorable. It's for the sake of their great nation. _What are we testing for?_ It's the question no one ever asks.  
  
The proctor for the Program is a familiar face. When she is introduced to him, she feels something raw for the first time outside of her dreams in years and years. Shock. It's so cold and unpleasant and unfamiliar that it takes her breath away. She'd forgotten what it was like to feel it.  
  
"You remember Sakamochi, right?"  
  
Of course she remembers Sakamochi. She stares right at him. He looks at her and pretends not to recognize her.  
  
In a fantasy, she makes sure he remembers who she is right before she fires one neat shot into his guts.  
  
In reality, she bows from the hips.  


 

  
That night Yukie says to her, _Is that who you are, Haruka?_  


 

  
The Utsumi family hasn't moved from the home Yukie once shared with them. When Haruka shows up at the door, her father looks stricken. He nearly closes the door in her face. That's how she knows he recognizes her.  
  
She is due to report for duty in Aomori in twenty-eight hours.  
  
Haruka delivers Yukie's apology to him twelve years late, and then she issues her own for taking so long. Yukie's father invites her in and sits with her on the mat. Haruka props her leg beneath the table and waits. There are no reminders or mementos of Yukie anywhere to be seen, but she's not sure what exactly she was hoping for. Yukie has been scrubbed from this place. It has been sterilized of her presence, smoothed over and packed down.  
  
She's still not sure why she came here. He doesn't ask her.  
  
"You took a position with the Non-Aggressive Forces." Yukie's father stares right at her. "I take it you've come to realize that you aren't the only one?"  
  
Haruka hesitates before nodding. She knows that Yukie's father has always had an administrative role in the Forces, that he'd known so much more than he'd been able to tell his daughter. But there is no need to avoid disclosure here. Not with her. They are both soldiers for the Republic of Greater East Asia. They serve the same cause. If there is anything that Haruka has learned over the past decade, it is that there is only one true cause to be served in her country. There are no other options.  
  
"Program winners make excellent soldiers," he says. He is toneless. "You understand why."  
  
She does, not that she would count herself as an example. But she has met others— hard-eyed young men and women who had wanted to win and were glad they did and had no regrets. The Mitsuko Soumas and Kazuo Kiriyamas of the Forces. Those are the _only_ ones she's met. The others don't survive that long. They don't go on to have illustrious careers with the Forces. They let themselves fall into the shadows. Haruka isn't one from either category. She's not. She'll never be.  
  
"Lance-Corporal Mizushima." He's staring at her chest, reading off of her nameplate. "That's the name they gave you?" It's not really a question.  
  
Haruka nods. She's had the name for nearly as long as she'd had her old one. But it'll never be hers. There's a long stretch of silence, and Yukie's father is staring down at his knuckles.  
  
"Utsumi," he says finally, low enough that it's almost like he's just talking to himself. "I never liked it. I told them it didn't suit me."  
  
The implication of what he's given away starts to smother her.  
  
Aomori.  
  
"Yukie would never have understood," he says quietly. "How I found a way to live with it."  
  
Tomorrow.  
  
Haruka grips at her prosthetic leg, right at the knee joint, squeezes until her fingers go numb. It keeps her hands from trembling. _How do you find a way to live with it?_  


 

  
_Is that who you are?_  


 

  
In her dreams, Yukie says, _It's not too late._  
  
Haruka wants to reach for her. Wants to hold her the way she could never bring herself to do. _For what?_ she asks.  
  
_To be glad that you lived,_ Yukie says, and she's smiling. _That's the Haruka I knew. You told me that we should share our hope, so..._  
  
She'd been so afraid to touch Yukie after she had become aware of her feelings for her. Scared that, by touching her, she'd be taking something from Yukie, drawing the purity out of her just by the strength of her desires alone. _My love_ , she'd called her, like Yukie was something that had belonged to her, although she never had. Haruka knows that now. The ghost girl before her isn't real, and she knows that she won't be coming back. Not in the waking world, and not here in this place tucked deep inside of her mind that's a little bit like death. She doesn't need her any more.  
  
When Haruka moves towards her, Yukie's body scatters like sparks. Haruka wakes up with a start in her quarters. After that, she doesn't dream about her again. She doesn't have to.  


 

  
Defection is a crime punishable by execution. Haruka would liked to have gone down in smoke and flames with Sakamochi's corpse at her heels, but that isn't who she is. It never was and it never will be.  
  
She has to buy her way out, and so she bribes her way onto the first ship to Hong Kong. They are intensely suspicious of her surrender, and they should be. Defection from the Republic is nearly unheard of. They take her into confinement, and she knows that she has a long road ahead of her. There are going to be endless questions. Probing. Analysis. She's fine with that.  
  
They strip her of her uniform. She gives them everything she has on her body. It's not much.  
  
"Kaori Mizushima?" says the official before her in accented Japanese, staring at the nameplate.  
  
"No," she says, finally, the first thing she's said to anyone apart from _Please grant me asylum_ to the coastal patrol soldiers. "My name is Haruka Tanizawa."  



End file.
